Jan van der Horn

Jan van der Horn (1951) is a photographer in Amsterdam who discovered photography at the Dalton Lyceum in Voorburg. Waving his press card and camera, he gained access to the wider world: doors behind the stage opened for stars such as Frank Zappa, Elton John, The Byrds and Pink Floyd. After secondary school he studied photography at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and assisted Chris Paul Stapels and later Jaap de Graaf. He slept in the studio behind the rolls of paper and spent day and night in the darkroom learning the craft. One major client was The Polaroid Corporation. By first making a Polaroid on the back of his Hasselblad, and later working with 4x5-inch and even 8x10-inch material, he learned to understand the medium.

Eventually Jan found his way to staged photography. In his studio on the Bloemgracht he began creating his own world: building sets, painting backgrounds and working on the moment between day and night, twilight, the magic hour. His studio gradually turns into a photographic stage. It is like making little gardens: with paper, clay, cardboard, copper, color pigment and bicycle lights, he creates a wondrous world that he then captures photographically. Flat green cardboard becomes reeds, red silk becomes blooming roses through Paverpol, and bicycle lights turn into will-o’-the-wisps.

Jan now works from his photo studio on the Zamenhof site in Amsterdam-Noord, a creative fringe area where studios, workshops, unusual characters and small businesses come together. His approach does not begin with a fixed plan: he simply starts and sees, together with Leyla, where the work leads. He lets the material guide him, creates the conditions and presses the button at the right moment. Moonlight, black and white, the magic hour and the control of the studio all play a major role in his work. Or, as he sums it up himself: catching fairy tales.